1. Field of the Invention
This invention pertains generally to video encoding, and more particularly to intra mode decisions within advanced video encoding (such as H.264/AVC or MPEG 4 Part 10) standards.
2. Description of Related Art
H.264/AVC, alternatively known by MPEG 4 Part 10 and several other monikers, is representative of improved data compression algorithms. This improved data compression, however, comes at the price of greatly increased computational requirements during the encoding processing phase.
Additional background information can be found in the following publications which are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety:    [1] Stèphane Mallat and Frèdèric Falzon, “Analysis of Low Bit Rate Image Transform Coding,” IEEE Trans on Signal Processing, vol. 46, no. 4, pp. 1027-1042, April 1998.    [2] Zhihai He and Sanjit K. Mitra, “A unified rate-distortion analysis framework for transform coding,” IEEE Trans on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, vol. 11, no. 12, pp. 1221-1236, December 2001.